Washington Post’s Book World Goes Out of Print as a Separate Section

In another sign that literary criticism is losing its profile in newspapers, The Washington Post has decided to shutter the print version of Book World, its Sunday stand-alone book review section, and shift reviews to space inside two other sections of the paper.

The last issue of Book World will appear in its tabloid print version on Feb. 15 but will continue to be published online as a distinct entity. The Post said in a statement Wednesday that in the printed newspaper Sunday book content will be split between Outlook, the commentary section, and Style & Arts. Book World will occasionally appear as a stand-alone print section oriented around special themes like summer reading or children’s books.

Book World was one of the last remaining stand-alone book review sections in the country, along with The New York Times Book Review. The Post’s move comes as the company, like most other newspaper businesses across the country, has been hobbled by a protracted downturn in advertising. “The advertising in Book World didn’t justify the amount of space that we dedicated each week to books coverage,” Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Post, said in a phone interview. “But we write about books, and we will continue to write about books because they are important to our audience and our readers.”

As it happens, Book World never garnered much advertising from publishers, who generally spend very little on newspaper ads. Publishers now focus their marketing dollars on cooperative agreements with chain bookstores, which guarantee that certain books will receive prominent display at the front of stores.

Under the new arrangement at The Post, the combined pages allocated to books in the two sections will likely be fewer than the 16 tabloid pages currently devoted to reviews. The staff of Book World, already shrunk drastically from its peak, will remain intact, and Rachel Shea, Book World’s deputy editor, will oversee the team, according to the Post’s statement. Columns by Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, will appear in Style & Arts on Sunday, and columns by Jonathan Yardley, also a Pulitzer-winning reviewer, will appear in Outlook.

“Our intention is to have nearly as many reviews as we’ve had in the past, though clearly there will be somewhat less room,” Mr. Brauchli said. He added that the paper would be experimenting with different types of book coverage.

“If there are three books coming out about Abraham Lincoln, you might write an article about the books and their ideas and themes that are common to those three books in a single article, or it might be an article that addresses those three books but really is about how Barack Obama derives inspiration from Lincoln,” Mr. Brauchli added. “There are different approaches to reviewing books and we will continue to do lots of the kind of book reviews that you’re acquainted with in Book World and we will also experiment with other ways of writing about and reviewing books.” Book World was created in 1967 and was folded into the Style section in 1973. The Post revived it as a stand-alone section in the early 1980s.

“I think it’s going to be a great disappointment to a lot of readers,” said Marie Arana, who edited Book World for a decade before taking a buyout from The Post in December. “I just hope that there’s enough coverage and emphasis and attention given on the pages where Book World will now appear in print in Outlook and Style & Arts to satisfy those readers.”

Rumors of Book World’s imminent closing last week brought widespread dismay within the literary world. Hundreds of contributors and readers signed a petition circulated by the National Book Critics Circle, urging the Post to save the stand-alone section.

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I think its going to be a great disappointment to a lot of readers, said Marie Arana, Book Worlds former editor.Credit
Julia Ewan/The Washington Post

“This is disheartening,” said Jane Ciabattari, president of the circle, after hearing that the section was indeed being closed. “The only good news is that books coverage continues, and that the section is intact online. But the print edition of the stand-alone Book World was cherished by readers throughout the region and the country.”

Several former contributors referred to the stand-alone section’s symbolic importance in giving priority to books. “There is a lot of great online coverage, but you go and look for it,” said Meg Wolitzer, a novelist and regular reviewer for Book World. “For people who get it on their front step, books are honored there, and the loss of that seems like a big mistake.”

The New York Times Book Review is now the largest remaining Sunday tabloid section, publishing at least 24 and as many as 30 or more pages a week with a staff of 15 and contributions from dozens of freelance reviewers. In addition to being included in the Sunday paper, the Book Review is sold as a separate section to 23,500 subscribers. An additional 4,200 copies of the section are sold in bookstores across the country.

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The San Francisco Chronicle publishes an eight-page book review that is inserted into its Sunday Insight section but has its own front cover and is designed to be pulled out, said the books editor, John McMurtrie.

For the past several years, newspapers across the country have been merging independent sections into other parts of the paper as well as cutting back book coverage.

The Los Angeles Times lost its stand-alone Sunday section in 2007, when it was combined with the paper’s opinion section and the Sunday pages devoted to book reviews dropped to 10 from 12. At the end of 2008 the newspaper was redesigned again, moving the book reviews to the second of a two-part weekly Calendar section devoted to the arts.

David L. Ulin, book editor of The Los Angeles Times, said the paper had also increased review coverage during the week, adding one more daily review, and adding content online. “I think that it’s possible to keep book coverage robust without a stand-alone section,” Mr. Ulin said in a phone interview, “both by creative combination of using daily and Sunday print space and using the Web.”

He acknowledged that, in total, the paper was running two to three fewer reviews a week. But he asserted there were some advantages to having been moved into a broader section. “In a section where there are a variety of elements, there might be people who might not ordinarily look at book reviews who might now look at book reviews,” Mr. Ulin said. “One of the issues with book culture in general is it tends to be a garrison culture and identify itself as contrary to mainstream culture, and that in many ways is a self-defeating premise.” He added: “You could argue that putting books into the general mix opens more people to that conversation.”

But Steve Wasserman, Mr. Ulin’s immediate predecessor as books editor of The Los Angeles Times, said that a stand-alone book review section was vital for literary culture. “Maybe it’s just foolish and sentimental nostalgia on my part,” he said, “but somehow one likes to think that the republic of letters actually deserves the recognition of a separate country.”

He said he wasn’t persuaded by the argument that folding book reviews into a broader section helped increase exposure for books because such moves tended to diminish total coverage. “If I was convinced that by putting all of arts and entertainment into one place that it genuinely led to an expansion of coverage, I probably wouldn’t oppose it,” Mr. Wasserman added. “But I can’t recall of an instance when book sections disappeared and book coverage was folded into other sections where the coverage expanded.”

Douglas Brinkley, the historian, suggested that the book industry and book reviews deserved some kind of public bailout. “I think that just like public television — I think book review sections almost need to get subsidized to keep the intellectual life in America alive,” Mr. Brinkley said. “So if we can do that for radio, and we could do it for television, why can’t we do it for the book industry, which is terribly suffering right now?”

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